Imagine how you would react if China launched their version
of cruise missiles at Israeli military targets because the Chinese Government
did not approve of the way the Israelis had conducted a military operation in
the West Bank. You would probably be
outraged, right?
Now tell me why the United States has any standing to launch
a punitive attack against Syrian forces in the wake of their likely use of
chemical weapons on Syrian rebel-held territory. How has it come about that we have appointed
ourselves in charge of punishing nations who do things the global community of
nations disapproves of?
If the world is outraged by the use of chemical weapons in
Syria, the world should do something about it—not just the United States.
And while I am ranting, how are chemical weapons different
from more traditional ways of brutally killing your own citizens? The Syrian regime of Bashar al Assad has
killed between 20,000 and 40,000 rebel fighters. The rebels have killed near 30,000 Syrian
soldiers and police. By all accounts,
more than 100,000 civilians have been killed in the fighting.
How are the deaths of those 100,000 children, men, and women
any more acceptable than the deaths of the 1000 killed by a chemical agent last
week? This distinction between
conventional weapons and chemical weapons is stupid. Weapons are weapons and dying is dying.
President Obama and those who support a limited strike on
Syrian military capacity say they are sending a message that the use of
chemical weapons crosses the line. I
would agree that a limited strike does send a message. But I would also argue that supporters leave
the second half of the message it sends unstated.
“The use of chemical weapons crosses a line—that the use of
old-fashioned bullets, landmines, mortars, and shells does not cross, so you
should feel free to rain those more traditional weapons down on civilians all
you want.” Is this really the message
President Obama—and the rest of the world—wants to send?
I have no solution here.
In an ideal world, the UN would be unanimous in its condemnation of the
Syrian regime and all of their actions against civilians. It would also deplore any rebel actions aimed
at civilians. The UN has proven time and
again to be a terribly flawed and mostly powerless institution when it comes to
preventing violence.
But this is far from an ideal world and bad actors have
forever, (and probably will always), use whatever means at their disposal when
they are feeling like they are out of options.
For the United States to have any credibility, we need to either stand
up for innocents EVERY time governments use any weapons against them or we need
to be much more cold-hearted and practical and respond only when our
self-interest as a nation is at stake in a real and strategic way. Our selective moral outrage drives me crazy
and only serves to lessen our credibility around the world.
A weapon is a weapon, whether it be a suicide bomb strapped
to the belly of a 12-year old girl, a drone-launched missile fired at a Land
Rover in the desert around Marib in Yemen, a smallpox-infected blanket left as
a gift for relocated Native Americans, or Sarin gas deployed against a town in Syria. The people who die, die. One way is not any more morally reprehensible
than another to me.
I hope in the coming days President Obama will see the
futility of any sort of military strike against the Syrian regime. But I doubt it.
